‘Silo’s Author Officially Calls This 2-Part Apple TV Sci-Fi “The Best Show Airing Right Now”

Published Oct 10, 2026, 7:52 PM EDT

Julio is a Senior Author for Collider. He studied History and International Relations at university, but found his calling in cultural journalism. When he isn’t writing, Julio also teaches English at a nearby school. He has lived in São Paulo most of his life, where he covers CCXP and other big events. Having loved movies, music, and TV from an early age, he prides himself in knowing every minute detail about the things he loves. When he is older, he dreams of owning a movie theater in a small countryside town.

Few things are quite as inspiring as the camaraderie among science fiction artists, and, just this week, more proof came when Hugh Howey, author of the Silo novels that inspired the Apple TV series, took to social media to praise another series in the streamer’s catalog, Dark Matter, calling it “the best show airing right now.” As different as the shows may be from each other, they do feel connected thanks to Apple’s penchant for making great sci-fi, and Howey is correct: there’s really nothing quite like Dark Matter in the streaming landscape. Tried and tested by both audiences and critics alike, it’s a must-watch, even for those who don’t usually like sci-fi.

Currently in its second season, Dark Matter is based on the Blake Crouch novel of the same name. The series follows protagonist Jason Dessen (Joel Edgerton), a Chicago physicist who lives a comfortable life with his wife, Daniela (Jennifer Connelly), and son, Charlie (Oakes Fegley), both of whom he loves deeply. Jason has always wondered what his life would’ve been like had certain events happened differently, and, one day, he gets to test this theory in the worst possible way.

While returning home one night, Jason is suddenly kidnapped by a man wearing a strange mask who puts him inside a giant metal box and leaves him in a completely different reality, one where he is an award-winning scientist who has just made one of the greatest scientific discoveries in history. This mysterious man is actually that world’s version of Jason (whom we’ll call Jason #2), who regrets not making the same decisions that led our Jason to marry the love of his life and start a beautiful family.

Now living an empty, yet highly successful life, Jason #2 kidnaps the original Jason and switches worlds with him, stealing his family and existence. Alone in a reality that isn’t his, Jason now has to figure out how to return to his own world. As he wanders through infinite realities in search of his own, he also meets infinite versions of the people he loves, confronts his own faults as a person, and witnesses firsthand what his life could be like had he made different decisions from the ones that gave him everything he might be about to lose.

When we talk about “infinite realities,” the implied subject is obviously the multiverse. This concept is pretty much inescapable nowadays, featuring in major movie franchises and indie flicks alike, but Dark Matter actually has one of the best and most easily understandable takes on the multiverse right now. Since Jason is himself a physics professor in his main universe, he is often able to quickly work out how to navigate the multiple realities, as well as do it in a way that’s clear for both the audience and whoever he is with.

To that end, Dark Matter draws directly from actual scientific concepts and theories to explain how its multiverse works. Thanks to The Big Bang Theory, viewers have become familiar with the idea of Schrödinger’s Cat, where a cat is put inside a box with a radioactive atom whose decay determines whether the cat lives or dies. While no one checks whether this atom has decayed or not, it exists in superposition, meaning that the cat inside the box is simultaneously both alive and dead. This time, though, it’s not a joke.

Your answers point to the world your instincts were built for. This is the universe your temperament, your survival instincts, and your particular brand of stubbornness were made for.

You took the red pill a long time ago — probably before anyone offered it to you. You’re a systems thinker who can’t help but notice the seams in things.

The wasteland doesn’t reward the clever or the well-connected — it rewards those who are hard to kill and harder to break. That’s you.

You’d survive here because you know how to exist in moral grey areas without losing yourself completely.

Arrakis is the most hostile environment in the known universe — and you are precisely the kind of person it rewards.

The galaxy far, far away is vast, loud, and in a constant state of violent political upheaval — and you wouldn’t have it any other way.

Dark Matter introduces its own box and its own version of the radioactive atom, which then creates the conditions for an actual living human to be in superposition and, in principle, move between every possible universe. Every single decision and tiny thing we do influences our path, and that leads to infinite timelines, as well as infinite versions of ourselves, each with its own living experience. For Jason, that means infinite versions of himself who also experience the trauma caused by Jason #2, and that’s only part of the danger.

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